8th Ed. Canon balls & the Steggy

[Mallas]

My friends and I are constanly debating the canon ball vs steggy and I would like to ask for everyones input.

I understand that the canon ball is classed as a template weapon, but how does this affect;

a) Hero using steggy as mount
b) Steggy run with crew only.

My real question is how to you determine who/what gets hit and how are wounds resolved?

For now, I am not going to share my own thoughts on this, as I do not want to taint anyone responses and want to know what other people think.

 

[Arli]

Because it is classified as a template weapon, the cannonball hits the steg and any riders. This is one of the biggest points of argument in 8th edition. It is also why Cannons have become over powered.

In the case of an EOTG, the cannonball hits the priest, the crew, and the stegadon.

 

[SouthlandLizardman]

Canons still aren't as OP as Skaven.

In my group we houseruled that it hits the stegadon, or the Crew AND the Priest. We randomly decide with a coin toss

 

[The Omen]

Arli is right, a cannon is like a template and as such hits everything - Just like it would if it was hit by a stone thrower or flame template.

It is crap, and does make cannons overpowered (with a 91% accuracy against stegs and similar based models if placed right and has an engineer) GW really need to do something about them, in my gaming group we added the ability to "under" shoot as well as overshoot (afterall if you can overpack gunpoweder why not underpack too). We do this with a simple d6 roll when you roll the artillary dice 1-3 undershoots by that amount, 4-6 overshoots.

 

[Switchblade]

I really like that house rule! I agree cannons are extremely strong, they need to be balanced. Ancient annon were accurate, but range can be be an issue. What if they nerfed the range on cannons?

 

[Lord Tsunami]

it is a nice idea to nerf cannons a bit, but tbh you pretty much made them useless. try and think of it in more of a rock-paper-scissors fashion. the cannon will kill the stegadon unless you have a bit of luck, the engine of the gods or lore of life (i always have the last two and hope for the first ), but your chameleons will kill the cannon. in the matchups that are not against empire, dwarfs or ogres your stegadon will be incredibly strong instead. if your local meta game means that you pretty much always face a lot of cannons, then just leave the stegadon at home. cannons are not very good against the rest of your army. if you face a multitude of different opponents then probably the stegadon will be really good most of the time, and you can expect to win every game, can you?

if you do face cannons, i can really recommend deploying the stegadon so that it is facing sideways. that will make it harder to hit with a cannon (larger chance to overshoot). also, since it can pivot freely, you actually get an inch or two of free movement towards the enemy

 

[The Omen]

it is a nice idea to nerf cannons a bit, but tbh you pretty much made them useless. try and think of it in more of a rock-paper-scissors fashion. the cannon will kill the stegadon unless you have a bit of luck, the engine of the gods or lore of life (i always have the last two and hope for the first ), but your chameleons will kill the cannon. in the matchups that are not against empire, dwarfs or ogres your stegadon will be incredibly strong instead. if your local meta game means that you pretty much always face a lot of cannons, then just leave the stegadon at home. cannons are not very good against the rest of your army. if you face a multitude of different opponents then probably the stegadon will be really good most of the time, and you can expect to win every game, can you?

if you do face cannons, i can really recommend deploying the stegadon so that it is facing sideways. that will make it harder to hit with a cannon (larger chance to overshoot). also, since it can pivot freely, you actually get an inch or two of free movement towards the enemy

I wouldn't say we made them useless - the resident statician at our group says they still have a 60+% chance of hitting (I can't remember the exact amount) which is no too bad (similar to BS4 at short range having not moved) the difference is that you arn't pretty sure of garanteing a hit every turn - meaning monsters/knights/anything small but expensive has a chance against them.

Also even against infantry armies cannons used to do well over their points cost in damage - I can't name another choice in the entire game that you can be 99% sure will do enough damage to justify the points. Our cannon rule has actually gone down very well with all concerned. Under the "standard" rule everyone took blocks of infantry all the time in all armies (afterall who wants to lose 300+ points before you even get to move because a cannonball was dropped on it head?) now that we have put it in armies are getting interesting again.

I'm actually told that the "overshoot/undershoot" rule was an official rule 4-5 editions ago, but was taken out.

 

[Lord Tsunami]

I'm actually told that the "overshoot/undershoot" rule was an official rule 4-5 editions ago, but was taken out.

nope, back then you had to guess the range. you said "i shoot 32" forward" (and you werent allowed to measure). other than that it was the same. (that was much more fun tbh )

if you have a 60% chance of hitting, that means you would do an average of ~1,7 wounds per turn on a monster. thats not nearly good enough imo. you payed 200 points for that cannon (you said you had an engineer right?) 200 points of handgunners would do ~1,65 wounds to a stegadon per round, and they are WAY better versus anything else.

I do agree that cannons are scare, but i find it a part of the game. some units are worthless against some armies. my stegadon will die every time when i play dwarfs. by the same logic by brother's mournfangs that will massacre my sauruses are rendered completely useless against my hexwraiths when i play VCs. you shouldnt allow your opponent to shoot more than once or twice (if he is very good at deployment) with a cannon before you kill it. it is possible to survive that if you try hard and have a bit of luck, or a building to hide behind

EDIT: if i were to houserule a nerf to cannons, i would try having them do d3+1 wounds instead of d6. the average is just slightly worse, but they can no longer one shot monsters

 

[The Omen]

Whilst you are correct that it's a case of rock, paper, scissors In this case it'd be more like rock, paper, scissors, fire - with fire automatically beating all the others.

Yes it's a case that a cannon shooting at a steg/dragon/other large monster will easilly do it's points worth in damage, but shooting at units it'll do more than it's points worth in 99/100 games too.

Yes, in theory you can use Chameleons to kill it off - but with grapeshot you need to 1 turn kill in (since the grape shot will tear them apart due to auto hit)- and since you'd need to get 3 sixs to do that you'd need (on average) 9 Chamelons to take one down, and thats just on average presuming you get the first turn so non of them have died!! And again, in the rock paper scissors analogy unlike the cannon if your opponant doesn't take a cannon the chamelons lose a lot of what makes them useful (they can still do some damage but it's unlikely they will do their points worth - unless your opponant also have a high toughness monster running around).

It may not be for everyone, but our house rule sopped cannons doing their points worth in damage in 99% of games to doing their points worth in around 60% (This was closely monitored to see what effect it would have) All in all a much more balanced system.

Obviously this is all subjective - and you can play with any house rule you want (or even without house rules), but our resident statician, plus the games we have played, show our change to be a pretty fair one - and since it has lead to more interesting and fun games then thats all that really matters .

 

[Wiggus]

Yes, in theory you can use Chameleons to kill it off - but with grapeshot you need to 1 turn kill in (since the grape shot will tear them apart due to auto hit)-

Ummm since when has grapeshot been auto hit Pg 113 clearly states that after rolling the artillary dice to see how many shots you roll to hit with the number of shots you got on the artillary dice, given that chameleons are on standard at -2 to hit they should only be hitting you on 6's or maybe 5's

 

[The Omen]

Ah ok, I've never come up against it so thats probably me not understanding the rule. The point still stands though that you have to hope for the first turn and that you take the cannon out in one turn or the chamelons probably won't be around for a second shot, and for the 90% of armies that don't have skirmish poisoned shots (off the top of my head I can't think of any except us) they don't even have this tactic to fall back on.

 

[Rhodium]

Ah ok, I've never come up against it so thats probably me not understanding the rule. The point still stands though that you have to hope for the first turn and that you take the cannon out in one turn or the chamelons probably won't be around for a second shot, and for the 90% of armies that don't have skirmish poisoned shots (off the top of my head I can't think of any except us) they don't even have this tactic to fall back on.

There are a couple of options in other armies for skirmishing poisons shots:
Dark elf assassin in a units of shades: scout skirmishers and poison
Skaven wind gloBadiers: skirmishers and poison
Skaven gutter runners: skirmishers scouts and poison

So some other armies can use this tactic but I don't think any other army is as point-efficient as skinks/chamos are. Nor are any of those choice as mainstream as skinks/chamos

 

[Wiggus]

Ah ok, I've never come up against it so thats probably me not understanding the rule. The point still stands though that you have to hope for the first turn and that you take the cannon out in one turn or the chamelons probably won't be around for a second shot, and for the 90% of armies that don't have skirmish poisoned shots (off the top of my head I can't think of any except us) they don't even have this tactic to fall back on.

in fact you chameleons should be alive for a turn or two, mathhammer which i hate has the means when they are hitting on sixes, only 1/3 of their artillery rolls should yield any more than one wound. as they need to be looking at hitting 8-10 on the arty dice. I run groups of 7 chams so id be around for a few turns of grapeshot and every turn he is using his cannon on my 94 point chams he isnt shooting my 275 pt steg which to me is a win win.

 

[Lord Tsunami]

dont forget long range penalty. as long as the chameleons are outside 6" the cannon will be hitting on 7s

 

[HoverBoy]

dont forget long range penalty. as long as the chameleons are outside 6" the cannon will be hitting on 7s

No they wont camos are bs4.

 

[The Omen]

I think he means the cannon is hitting on 7s (for long range and -2 for cham skirmishers)

For the sake of the argument I will grant that chameleon skinks may have the advantage over cannon (though I still maintain you have to 1 kill them or they’ll be charged/magic’d/shot or removed from play some other way by an opponent who knows what he is doing) That still means that for any opponent who isn’t a lizardman cannons will be able to freely shoot most of the game (due to a lack of readily/cheaply available units with massed poison shots).

Again, this is all personal opinion – my gaming group made the decision that cannons were ruining the game (which they were) so we made them less effective – with the full consent of the armies that take them. All in all it’s led to a far more interesting set of games and everyone having a lot more fun , which at the end of the day is why we play isn’t it?